Beer snack

Soda Rock Farms' Padron Peppers & Racer 5 IPA: Two of a Perfect Pair

Every once in a while, I'm lucky enough to find a combination of flavors that just works. At its best, a food pairing transcends the individual elements, and the dominant sensation on the palate is something else entirely, something distinct from any single component, a taste  uniquely created by the interaction of all  the elements working together.

Many of the finest and most classic examples are, of course, well-known, and I use them in my own cooking all the time and without apology: Rustic lamb and vin rouge from Hermitage; mint and dark chocolate; Sauternes and fois gras; scallops and bacon; sushi and soy sauce; baseball and Dodger Dogs. (Despite a birth certificate proclaiming San Francisco as my rightful home, I'm really a life-long recovering Angelino, but that doesn't change the empirical fact that the hot dogs at Dodger Stadium put any tubed pork products served up by the A's or Giants to shame.)

Then again, someone will on occasion serve me something so completely unexpected that it completely changes how I think about flavors, not because it is so radical, but because it sounds radical at first, but is in fact perfectly natural: Think of white chocolate and caviar or salmon poached in licorice (both found at the Fat Duck), or the French Laundry's justly celebrated dish of tapioca with oysters and caviar.

But my favorite flavor pairings are the ones that I stumble upon in the normal course of every day life, that I know, with absolute certainty, will sing on the palate before I even taste it. This was my experience at the farmer's market yesterday while talking to Dan the Tomato Man of Soda Rock Farms (Dan is, in my book, the undisputed heavy weight champion of heirloom tomato growers. Seriously, he's that good. He's better than that. A multiplicity of future posts, I'm sure...). Dan was expounding the wonderful properties of Padron peppers to another shopper, and he issued the following guarantee: "If you sit down and try these peppers with a cold beer, you'll finish them off, or I'll give you your money back." And it was a big bag of peppers.

I immediately had one of those light bulb-moments of total clarity and conviction that are so tragically rare, at least for me: Blister the peppers in a pan, toss them with olive oil and fleur de sel, and serve with a chilled Racer 5 from the Bear Republic Brewery: Padrons have a mild heat and a fairly pronounced bitterness which, I felt certain, would pair perfectly with the bitter hoppy-ness of the Racer 5; the dish would require virtually zero prep, one pan, and three ingredients (OK, four, if you count the beer); and, in keeping with our theme of the proximal, both the peppers and the beer come from my town.

No offense to salty nuts, but these Padrons are, hands-down, my new favorite beer snack:

Padron Peppers, and Not Much Else

Toss over high heat to blister evenly.

1. Put a saute pan on relatively high heat (medium if you have a high-BTU cooktop, more like high otherwise) and, while the pan warms, wash the peppers and pat them dry (it's important for them to be dry - you seriously don't want to be putting water into a blistering hot pan of oil).
2. When the pan is good and hot, add a small amount of neutral, high-heat oil, and add the peppers - do them in batches, if necessary, to avoid crowding the pan. Toss the peppers frequently until they are blistered and beginning to char on all sides; they will go from hard to soft. 
3. Remove from the heat, toss with some good olive oil (something with a really pungent, green, grassy taste would be ideal), and salt liberally with fleur de sel or course-grind kosher sea salt. Serve immediately with an ice-cold Race 5 IPA (or any other beer, but preferably something with some bitterness to it).

You'll finish the beer and the peppers, or your money back.